An Imperial Affection
by FANtom of the Opera
Summary: Hazel and Augustus have been through everything together. Now, as their cancer leaves them with numbered days, they seek their last forever. (This is a rewrite of the ending of TFiOS.)


**(A/N): Though this is a rewrite of the ending of **_**The Fault in Our Stars, **_**I do have great respect for its actual ending. John Green is a spectacularly spectacular author, and this is just one of my visions of how the book might end.**

** This is also my first fanfiction EVER. So don't judge too harshly.**

** SHOUTOUT to jasongracist and paraFANalia for their awesomeness. (See? I remembered!)**

Hazel was reading it again.

It was almost comical; their story had begun with _An Imperial Affliction, _and now it was ending with it. Hazel still remembered their time in Amsterdam, and the way his lips had felt on her cheeks. She may have been a Cancer Kid, but when they kissed they were just boy and girl. Him and her.

Augustus and Hazel.

She was just turning to the last page when she heard the doorbell ring. She didn't bother getting up to answer it; she knew she couldn't. She had been bedridden for the last few days; getting up had required too much effort. She drank up the air from her cannula since her lungs were clearly incompetent. They were the reason for her hardly-enough life sentence.

She heard the door open, and her mother's voice lit up. Though her mother's voice was light, Hazel could hear the concealed pain behind her every word. She hated dying. Dying sucked. But even more than that, she hated leaving her parents behind to pick up the pieces.

The wheels of Augustus' wheelchair creaked on the floorboards as Hazel's mom rolled him into her room. Hazel had been moved into a downstairs bedroom to reduce the amount of stairs—always a challenge—in her life. They also allowed Augustus to reach her faster, which was always a plus.

She could almost feel the tension in her chest lessen when he entered her room. "Hello, Hazel Grace," he said with a wink, his fingers tense on the wheels of his chair. Hazel's mom nodded once before turning to go and leaving them alone with each other.

Augustus wheeled over to her bed. "And how are you feeling today?"

Hazel laughed as she remembered how they'd met, trapped seemingly eternally in the Literal Heart of Jesus with Patrick and his ball cancer. Before, she had been able to recite the story verbatim, but now the lack of air in her lungs blurred everything out of focus. Hazel looked straight into his eyes, and contented herself just with the complexity of them. She remembered staring into those same eyes while Patrick reminisced about his catastrophically tragic life, daring Augustus to look away first. She'd once loathed the elfish grin dancing upon his high cheekbones, but now she couldn't imagine living without it.

"I'm doing alright," she managed, offering him a small smile.

He reached under her covers for her hand. She gave it to him, though she couldn't stop it from trembling. "Tonight, we will be remembered, Hazel Grace," he whispered.

She shrugged and tried to pull herself into a sitting position. "This is our night."

Augustus paused. "Well, in theory, this is not _our _night. There are over seven billion people on this planet that are living through this night—or day, depending on the half of the world you are on—and would be proud to call it theirs. But, if you want to be possessive, I suppose we could steal it just for now."

He coughed, and Hazel winced at the touches of red coloring his hands when he was finished. She pointed at the other side of the bed. "Get in. I was just about to finish _An Imperial Affliction,_" she commanded him. Without a word, he obliged.

"Ah." Augustus smiled as he eased into the bed and pulled the covers slowly up to his neck. "Do you remember, Hazel Grace Lancaster, when we made the acquaintance of the exorbitantly horrid Peter Van Houten?"

She did. Hazel still cringed when she finished the book every reread and relived the sound of his voice against hers, the accusations behind his drunken madness, and the tears pricking behind her own eyes when she and Augustus met him. She giggled, though the memory still hurt. "It was terrible," she squeaked.

Augustus' warm fingers sifted through her hair. "But it ended up being quite fortunate," he said tenderly, "because remember what happened after that?"

Hazel hated the conversation they were having. It was so painfully depressing to talk about what they had been through like it was ending. But what choice was there? Her lungs sucked at being lungs. His body sucked at being cancer-free. The roller coaster was going downhill. This was their one moment, their one time, to preserve themselves, to isolate Augustus and Hazel in a glass frame and save their smiles and stares and hugs and everything in between.

"Augustus," she said softly, "remember what I told you about oblivion?"

He smiled at her from his pillow. "The first day? _Our _first day? Quite. Oblivion is inevitable…" He waved his hands dramatically in the air.

She nodded. "Yeah," she replied, and not for the first time tonight her voice broke. "So I was wondering, Gus… is this our oblivion? Is this it?"

His sigh was audible. Augustus rolled over so that he was facing her completely and inched towards her until their lips were a breath from each other's. "You know, Hazel Grace, I've been thinking about that," he said, his voice hushed and gentle. "And I've discovered something. We may be heading to oblivion. This may be it for us. But think about it. Does it matter where we are—even in oblivion—if somewhere, a million miles away, someone is thinking about us? If someone has us in his or her memory and loves us, we're never really alone. There's no such thing as oblivion, as total isolation, if you have someone to travel the darkness with." He laced his fingers into hers. "I am proud to travel oblivion with you, Hazel Grace."

She couldn't hold them back anymore. Hot tears trickled down her dry face, over the cannula that was failing her, onto her lips that shook with words left unsaid, over her chest and her lungs that were squeezing her life into a few short days and she _needed more time, _more time to tell her parents that she loved them and travel the world with Augustus Waters and play video games with Isaac and even possibly frequent the Literal Heart of Jesus.

But she didn't have any time left. This was it. And even if this was their Last Good Night, she wanted it to be their best.

So she felt not even a sliver of regret when she covered the distance between them, whispered a breathy "Me, too," to him, and pressed her lips to his.

And maybe they were broken. Maybe their cancer was too much to render them anything but unfixable, cartons with an expiration date, but in that moment, it didn't matter.

In that moment, they were whole.

And Hazel and Augustus' story would never be _An Imperial Affliction, _but it still deserved enough—_they _deserved enough and more—to end like it did, in the middle of

** Well there you have it!**

** Please post constructive criticism (and compliments maybe?) below. THANK YOU PEOPLE OF THE WORLD**


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